If you decide to pursue this I'll send you a design for a two part cell that is dramatically superior to Festes, though I do no mean to take anything away from him in the statement.
The first post on the topic was in a drug newsgroup: the guy used a mercury cathode if i recall.
Loook for "Silver Dream Racing" for the first use of Ag which worked, though the yield was not great.
When first starting this, ephedrine was available in 30 MG
pink cpsules and a snap to extract.
later, pseudo was used and it was more difficult: mainly because it has to be clean. real clean.
The chloro process converts about 30% (if I recall) of the
e to pseudo e: oops, I mean the other way around: the pseudo > 30 to 40% to e: i suspect the strong dehydrating
environment in hot HCl and ZnCl2 pulls the OH away far enough for the chain to vibe around, and when the OH re slams back into the alpha C, sometimes it's surprised to be 180 degrees from where it was.
I think Rhode has a theoretical maximum % available from the reduction of the chloro intermediary, but I don't recall what it is or how it is arrived at.
But the product is real nice. A good birch approaches it.
yeah, know It's all sposed to be the same......
The best results I had were using PdC, which is admittedly cheating a bit. Well, alright, a lot.
Were I to undertake this again, I would try it with urushibara Ni, or maybe Ur. Cobalt (or ppt cobalt activated with H)
Oh wait a minute: I thnk Rhode commented on the maximum conversion of psudo to chloro-pseudo ephedrine. yeah,that's it.
IMHO the conversion is significantly higher if you accomplish it in a microwave, which I've described
somewhere how to do..
I agree that Way Up North was the most proficient in
getting it down. In summary, unless you are a GUP extraction magician, i would rec ommend extracting
ephedra for the alkaloids. the reaction is somewhat
fragile.
INtroducing ultrasound to the protocol could enhance
it's success greatly.
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good luck. It would be good to see that technique refined,
as it produces excellent goods, and is totally clandistine.
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